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The Nashville Statement: Evangelical Confession on Marriage and Sexuality

Rev. C•D•F• Warrington, M.Div.
By Rev. C•D•F• Warrington, M.Div.

Ordained Minister, M.Div.

July 27, 2026

3 min read

modern confessions
An open Bible with a wedding ring resting on its pages beside a cross representing biblical marriage

The Nashville Statement, released in August 2017, is one of the most significant — and most controversial — evangelical confessional documents of the twenty-first century. Produced by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and signed by hundreds of evangelical leaders, it represents a deliberate act of confessional definition at a moment when cultural pressure on traditional Christian sexual ethics was intensifying.

The Context: Why a Statement Was Needed

The years before 2017 had seen the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States (2015), rapidly shifting cultural attitudes, and significant divisions within evangelical institutions over how to respond. Some evangelical leaders and organizations were reconsidering traditional positions. The Nashville Statement was partly a boundary marker — a public assertion that the signatories held and intended to maintain the historic Christian teaching on marriage and sexuality.

The Structure of the Statement

The Nashville Statement follows the classic confessional pattern of affirmations and denials — directly echoing the Barmen Declaration's structure. Fourteen articles cover marriage (between man and woman), sexual purity before marriage, transgender identity, and the relationship between homosexual desire and Christian faithfulness. Each article pairs a positive statement ('We affirm') with a negative one ('We deny'), following the historic confessional pattern of defining truth by excluding falsehood.

Reception and Controversy

The Nashville Statement was received enthusiastically by traditionalist evangelicals and harshly criticized by progressive evangelicals and mainline Protestants. Critiques focused on its tone (perceived as harsh toward LGBTQ+ persons), its completeness (accused of omitting pastoral nuance), and its Article 10 (which implied that affirming homosexual relationships was incompatible with Christian faithfulness). Defenders argued that confessional clarity, while uncomfortable, was essential for the church's integrity.

The Nashville Statement as Modern Confession

Whether one agrees with its conclusions or not, the Nashville Statement illustrates what modern confessions do: they address specific contemporary challenges with the specific doctrinal resources of the Christian tradition. Like Barmen (which addressed Nazism), Belhar (which addressed apartheid), and the Lausanne Covenant (which addressed the relationship of evangelism and social action), Nashville addressed a particular cultural crisis with confessional specificity. Its significance will be assessed in retrospect.

What the Nashville Statement Reveals About Evangelical Confessionalism

The Nashville Statement reveals both the strength and the vulnerability of evangelical confessionalism. Its strength: evangelicals can produce clear, structured, theologically serious confessional documents when they choose to. Its vulnerability: without ecclesiastical structures to receive and enforce confessional standards, such documents depend entirely on voluntary subscription and informal social pressure. The statement has influenced evangelical institutions but has no formal authority over any church.

Tags:modern confessionstheologychurch history

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Nashville Statement and when was it released?

The Nashville Statement was released in August 2017 by the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) at its annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee. It contains a preamble and 14 articles addressing human sexuality, marriage, and gender identity from an evangelical perspective. Signatories included prominent evangelical theologians and pastors such as John Piper, Wayne Grudem, Al Mohler, and J. I. Packer.

What do the 14 articles of the Nashville Statement affirm and deny?

The articles affirm that marriage is exclusively the union of one man and one woman, that sexual difference is a God-given gift, and that homosexual conduct is sinful while same-sex attraction is not itself a sin requiring condemnation. They deny that transgender self-conception is consistent with God's design and reject the claim that sexual orientation or gender identity is morally neutral. Each article follows the classical confessional format of paired affirmation and denial drawn from Reformed confessional tradition.

How was the Nashville Statement received by different Christian communities?

The Nashville Statement was welcomed by conservative evangelicals as a necessary and courageous reaffirmation of biblical sexual ethics at a moment of rapid cultural change. It was sharply criticized by progressive Christians, mainline Protestants, and many within the LGBTQ+ community as harmful and theologically deficient. Some moderate evangelicals raised concerns about tone, pastoral sensitivity, or the wisdom of issuing such a statement in the particular form it took, while still agreeing with its substantive positions.

How does the Nashville Statement compare to other modern evangelical confessions on sexuality?

The Nashville Statement is part of a broader wave of evangelical confessional statements on sexuality that includes the Manhattan Declaration (2009), which it complements, and the Revoice movement's pastoral responses that came after it. It is more precise and technical than the Manhattan Declaration, which addressed religious liberty more broadly. The Nashville Statement has been compared structurally to the Barmen Declaration in its use of paired articles, though critics note that Barmen addressed a political emergency while Nashville addressed intra-evangelical theological clarification.

Is the Nashville Statement considered a binding confession by any denomination?

The Nashville Statement is not a formal confessional standard adopted by any denomination, but several Southern Baptist seminaries and conservative evangelical bodies have encouraged or required their faculty to affirm it. The Southern Baptist Convention has affirmed its principles through its own resolutions and through the Baptist Faith and Message 2000. Some Presbyterian and Reformed denominations have also pointed to it as consistent with their own confessional standards on sexuality and marriage.

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